In the prison's central courtyard, Starfleet away teams were materializing out of thin air. Kira, Max, Bashir and Nog materialized at the center of the courtyard.

There were no Cardassian guards in sight, dozens of prisoners were running towards them. Some of the prisoners were shouting with joy, others were screaming for help, while hundreds of other prisoners were lying on the floor. Many were to weak to stand up, and the rest were still in their cells.

It was a revolting and nauseating sight to Bashir, seeing such suffering, and the dirty condition of the prisoners.

Max was looking around at the whole scene. “My God!” he said, “it's like they were rats stuffed in a cage!”

Nog's eyes were full of anger and it took an awful lot to anger Nog.

Kira was simply standing there, her mouth slightly open and clenching her fists.

Bashir looked briefly at Kira in concern. He had never seen Kira this angry for years, but he diverted his attention to the scene around.

Taking out his tricorder Bashir quickly scanned the entire prison. The tricorder showed the life signs of hundreds of prisoners. Clearly the situation was far more serious than he had anticipated, and he needed backup. He tapped his comm badge to contact the Defiant. “Captain can you spare any medical personnel from the Defiant?” he asked. “The situation in this prison is a lot worse than I feared.”

“I can spare you four medical personal but no more,” came Ezri's voice, “and I'll contact other ships asking them to send more medical teams.”

Bashir fell silent contemplating the task at hand, while Kira jerked out of her trance-like state.

“Come on!” Kira said forcibly to the away team, “let's get these prisoners out of here ASAP, Max you’re with me!”

While Kira and Max left the courtyard, Bashir was conducting more scans of the prison with his tricorder while he walked with Nog towards the prison cells.

“It's utterly barbaric!” exclaimed Bashir as he proceeded through the long and narrow prison corridors. “If these tricorder readings are correct, there are 1200 prisoners! How on earth do I treat so many people?”

Nog, though, was not listening to Bashir; his attention had caught something else.

“Julian!” said Nog urgently, “come over here quickly, this man's got a knife wound to his stomach!”

Bashir hurried over from another prisoner he was examining and went inside the prison cell, already Nog was inside trying to comfort the man.

“It's all right,” Nog said to the man, “a doctor's coming to heal the stab wound. What's your name?”

The man's lips barely moved as he spoke. “Jack Smith, I'm a crew member of the starship Liberty...” Jack stopped talking; he grimaced at the pain coming from his stomach.

“Are you coming Julian?” Nog said impatiently.

“I'm here,” Bashir replied, and he scanned Jack. “Okay... A single knife wound to the stomach, internal bleeding but not to much blood loss,” he reeled off, while taking out a dermal regenerator from his med kit. “What happened?” he asked Jack while running the dermal regenerator over the wound.

“It was Bordak,” Jack explained, “he slashed a knife through my stomach when I tried to stop him from taking Megan.”

“Who?” asked Bashir.

“Megan Felpes, the first officer of the Liberty,” replied Jack. “Bordak's taken her somewhere; I think Bordak is going to kill Megan!” he exclaimed.

Nog tapped his comm badge to contact Kira. “I'm onto it,” he told Jack. “Colonel, a prisoner called Megan Felpes is missing and has been taken by Gul Bordak! If this is the case, then Bordak may still be in the immediate vicinity of this prison!”

“Leave it to me, I'll find Bordak!” said Kira's angry voice.

Bashir had nearly patched Jack up. “Your stable for the moment,” he told Jack, “but your going to need further surgery. Now I've really got to check up on the other prisoners okay?”

“Yeah sure,” said Jack nodding.

Jack watched Bashir leave the cell while Nog stayed inside the cell. “Thank God you came,” said Jack, “otherwise, my life would have ended in this horrendous prison.”

“Do you have any family?” Nog asked, slightly timidly.

“No,” said Jack, he seemed almost restless despite his injury. “I hope they find Megan, she was the only friend I had in this hell-hole. If she's dead...” Jack's eyes were full of guilt.

“Don't worry, Kira will find Megan,” said Nog in reassuring tones.

***

Kira and Max were hurrying down the prison corridors searching for the missing prisoner, Megan Felpes. It had been a long time since Kira had felt this angry before. Arriving at the prison was like going back in time for her, back to the days of the Bajoran refuge camps, when she was a skinny little child foraging for food trying to survive, and seeing her family members die one by one from malnutrition or a brutal Cardassian attack.

Her old hatred of the Cardassians flared up once more. She could not get it out of her mind the terrible condition of the prisoners, and the brutality that the Cardassians had wrought upon them. Only one thing mattered to her; finding Gul Bordak and bringing him to justice.

Max broke the silence between them. “What's wrong with these Cardassians?” he asked. “Is it their nature to be so cruel?”

He is so naive thought Kira.

“Nature?” she replied, “many Cardassians are misguided because of their government and because of Central Command. You are only seeing one part of the Cardassians, and that is there military. The Cardassians you see here in this prison are the Cardassians of old, the last remnants of the old order.”

Nog's voice chirped from Kira's comm badge. “Nog here. I’ve checked the prison database and there are 1240 prisoners! But so far we've found 1200 prisoners, not including Megan. Colonel someone has taken away 40 prisoners and by the looks of it they were all of high status; captains and so forth. People who knew a lot of information about the organization they once worked for.”

“Acknowledged,” responded Kira.

Now they were outside of the prison, and Max was scanning the surrounding area with his tricorder.

“I'm getting a Federation signal half a kilometre to the north,” he told Kira, “it could be Megan...”

“Or some kind of trap...” said Kira. “If Bordak is there I'm going to risk it.”

She stopped walking and grabbed Max's arm, and looked into his face. “At the slightest sign of trouble leave me and call for reinforcements have you got that?”

“But you could be killed!” said Max, he seemed very surprised at Kira's orders.

Kira looked at him straight in the eye as she had to do so this, to caution Max. “I will not have you be killed or worse captured by the Cardassians. Your word Max.”

“Fine,” Max promised.

He lead the way using his tricorder to guide him as Kira followed, she had already taken out her disruptor, preparing for the worst.

Max stopped suddenly, his tricorder aimed at a cave. “It's in that cave I'm detect…”

“Be quiet!” Kira whispered, she strained her ears listening to what was going on. “There's some sort of commotion in that cave, can you hear it?”

“Yes,” said Max.

Kira could tell there were only two people. “Okay there are only two people,” she told Max. “Max you go to the left of the cave's entrance and I'll go to the right, on my signal we'll storm the cave together.”

She and Max stealthily approached the entrance to the cave, when they reached the entrance, they could hear laughter was coming out of the cave.

“Was that the best you could do Megan?” said a Cardassian who was gloating.

Kira signalled Max, and she went into the cave, her disruptor aimed straight at the Cardassian's back. “Freeze!” she said. “Drop the knife now!”

The Cardassian turned around and he was grinning like a maniac; it was Bordak. He dropped the bloodied knife and moved to one side of the cave and the palms of his hands were wide open.

“Max check the women,” said Kira, her eye was constantly on Bordak.

“You're not going to catch me...” taunted Bordak, as Max hurried past to check on Megan.

“Where can you go Bordak?” Kira's voice was triumphant. “Your prison is in Federation hands and your ships are destroyed or captured! You're out of options!”

Max looked at Kira and she could see blood all over Max's hands.

“We need to get her to the Defiant's sickbay immediately!” said Max. “There are multiple stab wounds all over her body!”

Kira contacted the Defiant and took a brief glance of Megan; there were stab wounds all over Megan's body. Though somehow Megan was still conscious and was lying down in a pool of her own blood, one of Megan's slashed hands was holding on to Max's arm. There was a look of helplessness on Megan's face which disturbed Kira greatly.

“Kira to the Defiant,” she said, “we've found Gul Bordak and another prisoner, this prisoner's seriously injured, and she’s with Max. Lock onto Max’s coordinates and beam both of them to the Defiant's sickbay!”

Kira saw Max pick Megan up in his arms.

Megan was looking at Max's face, her lips were moving but no sound came out of them and instead some blood trickled out of her mouth. A few seconds later Max and Megan were beamed off the planet.

Kira turned her attention to Bordak; it was just between her and Bordak. “As for you Bordak,” she hissed, “you're facing a life-time in prison for your monstrosities!”

Kira fired a charge from her disruptor at Bordak, but it was to late Bordak was gone.

She then hammered her comm badge. “This is Kira to the Defiant!” she said furiously, “Somebody has beamed Gul Bordak off this planet!”

“What!” said a surprised Ezri, “but there are no other ships orbiting Tau Primia aside from this strike force! I'm sorry Kira if the ship was a few parsecs away from Tau Primia, and it was equipped with a very precise transporter device, it could have just beamed up Gul Bordak. However this is the Badlands; you can barely spot ships from even one parsec away… And I’m afraid we don't have the time or the resources to go looking for Bordak.”

“Understood,” Kira said through gritted teeth.

She was hoping for revenge, a part of her was desperate to kill Bordak, to punish him for what he did to Megan and all the other prisoners. However, all Kira felt was anger, anger that Bordak escaped justice. She should have killed Bordak right there and then, but she did not have the gumption to do so, and Bordak exploited that weakness.

Taking a deep calming breath, Kira felt her anger ebb slightly. Now was not the time to be angry and self-brooding, not when there were prisoners to be rescued. So she headed back to the prison camp to assist the away teams.